Blog

We launched the ORBX and OctaneCloud AMIs on the AWS Marketplace in early November. We had modest expectations; this was a developer-facing product leveraging a new AWS GPU instance type.

Since the launch, we’ve been blown away by the interest and support we’ve gotten from the AWS community. Over 500 AWS customers subscribed in a matter of weeks. Thousands of hours of ORBX.js streams were launched, even before we saw our first usage report from AWS. The use cases we’ve seen have ranged from HTML5 cloud gaming to high-end, plugin-free app streaming. We’ve also been privy to several truly novel ideas taking ORBX.js in directions we had never anticipated.

It’s clear to us that that there is a deep and immediate interest in ORBX.js. We want to keep the momentum growing and understand that the ecosystem forming around ORBX.js must remain frictionless for that to happen.

With feedback from Mozilla, Autodesk and Amazon (our key partners in last month’s launch), we’ve decided on the following:

All of our AMIs on AWS will be free going forward. We’re dropping the $99/month price that would have gone into effect after the free trial ended on 12/31. We are keeping the current offering absolutely free, forever.

This is a first step towards an open source version of an ORBX video codec. No definitive timeline is set yet, but the goal is to provide an open source ORBX video codec via GitHub, after we’ve completed work on ORBX 3D and ORBX Render (we announced this back in October). The open source ORBX video codec will be based on an updated and improved version of the current ORBX.js video codec on AWS.

Watermarking is a key goal for ORBX.js video. Since launching on AWS, there have been two major studios that have begun evaluating ORBX.js for watermarked VOD as an alternative to DRM web video. Making ORBX.js video encoding free on AWS is a key step in ensuring this is a simple and cost effective option for content providers.

We plan on funding development of the free tier of the ORBX.js platform through commercial software like OctaneRender (which will soon import and export ORBX media), as well as custom development and licensing of technology built on top of the free ORBX platform deployed on AWS.

We are working on a free downloadable encoder and live streaming websocket library for Windows, OSX and Linux which will enable P2P screen sharing, live streaming and more –from and to any browser, using ORBX.js. ORBX.js will pull in encoded video through localhost, so the encoder won’t depend on any plug-ins or browser specific tweaks. We plan to move ORBX encoding entirely into JavaScript once WebCL/WebGL compute enables this.

We will maintain the downloadable ORBX encoder in tandem with the hosted version on AWS, creating a free and easy-to-use mesh network built on top of ORBX.js for both cloud and P2P streaming.

After seeing how quickly ORBX.js was adopted during the free trial, we feel strongly that going free on AWS will rapidly accelerate the growth of the ORBX ecosystem.

We hope that providing a dependable, royalty-free platform for delivering next gen video, cloud gaming and app streaming to any HTML5 browser will make the open web the platform of choice for content creators and developers worldwide.

ORBX Cloud Game Console / ORBX Cloud Game Console (Linux)is the world’s first platform for cloud gaming and graphics application as a service on Amazon EC2. Offering nearly 2x the GPU power of an XBOX ONE on G2 instances, the ORBX Cloud Console delivers next generation gaming ‘out of the box’ and enables app streaming.